News - Twitter planning to push promoted tweets into user streams

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Still looking for ways to make money from its service.

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Read more.

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Twitter has long sought a way to monetise its over three hundred million users, but previous attempts to add adverts have been met with resistance from users leading Twitter to re-evaluate its advertising strategy. The time may yet come when Twitter has to accept some abandonment of its service, in order to make it financially viable.

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Of course they could always move to a tiered system - with a basic (free) account and then more feature-packed paid versions. Not convinced that forcing folks to view adverts is necessarily a good idea - although there's always indenti.ca... ;)

If "promoted" tweets start appearing in my Twitter stream, I will just stop using Twitter. I don't use it much anyway.

Re: Tiered accounts

The obvious suggestion would be add-funded or paid (and advert free). Payers shoudl be able to avoid these pushed tweets, otherwise, accept them as the cost of using the platform.

One just has to hope they limit the number (or at least the proportion) of these pushed tweets so they do not becoem too intrusive.

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Payers could have two options: pay to have no adverts in their feed, or to see no adverts. Or both, obviously. As long as the cost is not unreasonable (and the prominence of ads similarly) (a couple of quid a month maybe? - maybe more for businesses to have no adverts in their feed) then it's a decent enough choice for users, IMO. Having said that, I don't use Twitter anyway so I don't really care :p

It just shows how greedy most internet users are. They wouldn't pay for a Twitter account despite it's prominence in their lives and when the company desperately tries to find some way of making a profit (which let's face it is what companies do) you get all this "well if they try to make money out of me I'll stop using it."

You pay for the mobile phone in your pocket because it's a service you value. If people value Twitter they should allow them to make some money. If not then it will die naturally.

Given that email and newsgroups allow >140 character transmission to anyone even without an account on your email server, and you traditionally got it as part of your ISP subscription, monetising extraneous communication is inherently difficult. Especially since twitter is overwhelmingly used for dumping brain rot.

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

Especially since twitter is overwhelmingly used for dumping brain rot.

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That's certainly my "contribution" to it! TBH, my main/only use is for getting advanced notice of discounts and deals. Apart from that I wouldn't miss it in the slightest.

Needless to say, I'm Facebook-free!

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Originally Posted by Betty_Swallocks

It just shows how greedy most internet users are. They wouldn't pay for a Twitter account despite it's prominence in their lives and when the company desperately tries to find some way of making a profit (which let's face it is what companies do) you get all this "well if they try to make money out of me I'll stop using it."

You pay for the mobile phone in your pocket because it's a service you value. If people value Twitter they should allow them to make some money. If not then it will die naturally.

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That's exactly what I do ... I pay Twitter precisely what the service is worth to me. I even pay a round number. A very round number, in fact.

But I actually agree with you - it seems to be part of the ethos of the net that everything is free, when in fact, as it costs, suppliers have to have a way of monetarising the service, of the internet will end up as nothing more than a collection of hobby sites. You want services, they cost to provide.

However, personally, I don't like the ad-subsidised model. It winds me up enough on TV that I go to some lengths to avoid it, and if a company wants to irritate me, send me a mailshot. If they want to really get on my bad side, do it again after having been asked not to. And if they want me fuming mad, telephone me on a number they only got after assuring me that that would not happen. Yes, AA, I'm talking about you.

If I want a service enough to pay for it, I'll pay for it rather than put up with ad's. Otherwise, I'd rather do without than put up with ad's if they're too intrusive. If I used Twitter, that type of ad insertion would result in me stopping using it, but as I don't, and don't see the appeal, it's a moot point.

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Originally Posted by Betty_Swallocks

It just shows how greedy most internet users are. They wouldn't pay for a Twitter account despite it's prominence in their lives and when the company desperately tries to find some way of making a profit (which let's face it is what companies do) you get all this "well if they try to make money out of me I'll stop using it."

You pay for the mobile phone in your pocket because it's a service you value. If people value Twitter they should allow them to make some money. If not then it will die naturally.

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What a crock!!

I use Twitter atm, if it costs in the future I'll stop using it and never miss it. They were talking about charging for Facebook a while ago until they realised 80%+ of their users would leave.

It's handy because it's there, but offers nothing that is worth my money!

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The twitter founders have said that they want to follow Google's path: create a product everyone wants to use, and then figure out a way to make money from it after.

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I wish we could all do that - get a few millions dollars of venture capital money and think about how to actually make any money once you have millions of free users.... :)


Oh and bung stephen fry a few quid to get him to promote it ....

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Originally Posted by F1nn

I use Twitter atm, if it costs in the future I'll stop using it and never miss it. They were talking about charging for Facebook a while ago until they realised 80%+ of their users would leave. It's handy because it's there, but offers nothing that is worth my money!

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I'm in the same boat as you - it's an interesting diversion, but being Twitter-less won't leave any kind of hole in my online life. But given that Twitter need to make some serious money, is ad-sponsored the best way, or would subscription be better?

Personally, if the ads are done sensibly then I guess that this is probably a reasonable way to do things. What "worries" me is that you'll end up with an online version of some US TV stations - where the programs give a convenient break between the 'commercial messages'. I've got some ad-supported apps on my 'droid phone, and with one exception, I'm aware of the ads, but they don't get in the way.

I guess this is a symptom of the continuing squeeze on budgets. Heck, I got a mail from last.fm last week to say that my 'subscription' was about to expire and hence I'd lose parts of the service. Funny, but I wasn't aware that I had a (free!) subscription with them until then. Now I'm wondering if it's worth £3pm - given my eclectic musical tastes, I'll probably sign up.

And there's my second point, that maybe Twitter should think about an ad-free subscription service. Some people hate the idea of ANY ad's appearing, and probably would sign up to skip the rubbish. Plus, there's always the kudos of having a "paid" account with extra features?

Edit: just checked my payment history, and lo-and-behold, I did pay for a last.fm subscription last year. Okay it's embarrassing, but it goes to show (perhaps) that if your subscription is reasonably priced then it's easy to regard it as a 'consumable'. And yes, I did renew for another year. :D